SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
Writing for SBC News, John Gordon dispels the myths that Incentive Games is a Free-to-Play games provider as he walks us through the company’s unique business model.
I’m banning the phrase ‘free-to-play’ in the Incentive Games office. Yes, I know what you’re thinking: “But isn’t that exactly what you do?”
No. Let me explain…
Some people, when they hear F2P, they don’t get much beyond the first word. They can, sometimes, get caught up in the fact that it doesn’t immediately make money. And they can assume those products are easy to make.
We create games that change our client’s market share overnight.
These games look simple, but they are built upon:
- 10 years’ worth of iteration (we were founded in 2013)
- This year, we will hit our target of having 100 million entries into our games every month.
- With this amount of entries, we garner more than 100 billion data points each month. Which is an awful lot. I won’t pretend to know what we do with all that – I leave that to the number wizards.
- Our dedication to data, maths, engineering and being pixel-perfect
The truth is you can’t just hire a bunch of graduates to do what we do. We have a 100-strong department, with decades of experience, working on our products day-in, day-out, and this is ALL we do.
So, we are not a Free-to-Play provider. We are a customer retention hack. We are a supersized growth tool. We are data and AI experts who harness sophisticated technology and analysis tools to drive maximum results.
Our products will have more than 100 million entries in a single month this year – that’s more engagements than the Kardashians – and are played in 125+ countries globally (yes, we’re counting Gibraltar).
Our staff has more PHDs than the whole of Mexico combined. OK, sure, PHDs aren’t super common there, but we’re still proud of our various doctors. We also have actual rocket scientists, chemical engineers, professional mathematicians and one lad with a marketing diploma (bless).
We take all that expertise and channel it into our bespoke games, each a feat of engineering in their own right – people say ‘hang it in the Louvre’ a lot on social media, but some of this stuff is actual art.
We were using AI before the newspapers decided to make it scary, testing games on the front end, using it to reward the right customers the right amount and analysing player data on the back end.
And if you’re thinking all of this is laddering up to a sales pitch, you’re wrong.
We work with the best of the best. Our products are lightyears ahead of the rest of the industry. Because we don’t limit ourselves to being just a ‘Free-to-Play provider’.
Going forward, our products will have just a handful of licences. It’s about quality over quantity of partners for us now. We will never over-supply any market, and will work with only a select few operators.
Yep, you read that right: we will limit all new game mechanics to a maximum of five operators/partners.
Told you it wasn’t a sales pitch.
One of the smart lads in the office reckons we’re the fastest-growing B2B businesses in Europe. It’s real ‘pinch yourself’ stuff – Incentive Games was born from a fantasy football product that we pivoted to a Free-to-Play engagement company.
Maybe Free-to-Play isn’t so bad after all…
